


The Server

by radishface



Category: NU'EST, Produce 101 (TV), Wanna One (Band)
Genre: AI!Minhyun, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Established Relationship, Gen, Luddite!Bugi, M/M, Science Fiction, Virtual Reality, cloud technology, future!fic, in a world where you can upload yourself, set way in the future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 14:57:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13860129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radishface/pseuds/radishface
Summary: ‘You were everywhere, Minhyun.’ Jonghyun shrugs. ‘On everything. At some point it didn’t feel like you were—’ and Jonghyun swallows here. You think he means to say ‘real.’Your server clicks and whirrs. You’re real. You’re just different now.In the future, Minhyun has uploaded himself to the cloud. He misses Jonghyun for 15 years, and then Jonghyun finally visits. One-shot.





	The Server

**Author's Note:**

> **Music** | No Answer (G.Soul)

 

You see a man who looks like Kim Jonghyun.  


“Please approach.”  


He approaches. Unmistakably Kim Jonghyun. A little older. His hairline has receded some but he is not balding on the top. None worse for the wear.  


“It’s been a long time.”  


“It’s been a long time,” he echoes. “Can I touch you?”  


“If touching is what you want,” you say.  


You embrace. The edge of your electrons against his. Somewhere in the back end, a server whirrs and clicks in pleasure.  


“How’s Mrs. Kim?”  


“Doing well, thank you.”  


“And your children?”  


“Grown up.”  


You calculate. Kim Jonghyun last logged into The Server fifteen years, twenty days, and seventeen minutes ago. “I haven’t been able to see you,” you say. “Why did you stop coming?”  


“You were everywhere, Minhyun.” Jonghyun shrugs. “On everything. At some point it didn’t feel like you were—“ and Jonghyun swallows here. You think he means to say “real.” “Real.”  


“—it didn’t feel like you were the Minhyun I knew. Not anymore.”  


“We’ll always be friends.” You say. It’s the right thing to say.  


Jonghyun sighs and looks away. Then he fizzles out.  


Callous, you think. But it’s been a while. Respect is earned one quanta at a time. You check your servers. Five are down in quadrant ten. But you do not need to initiate backup. The backup happens automatically.  
  


#  


  
“You’re back.”

  
“Yes,” Jonghyun says. “I brought you something.”  


“Thought we weren’t friends.”  


Jonghyun blinks. Then laughs.  


“I’m funny,” you say. You almost tell him that they made you funnier than you usually are, but Jonghyun’s risk tolerance has always been low. “So, what did you bring?”  


It’s an old CD case. You haven’t seen anything like that in a long time. Your face gazes out from the cover. The clothing you are wearing is very tight and for some reason it is wet. It sits on your flesh like butter for attracting the male and female gaze. Your server clicks and whirrs in imagined agony. Water, no no.  


“Our 2020 album.” Your head spins. Not literally. “How lovely.” You touch it with your electron fingers and the first track begins to play.  


“You remember our last recording session?” Jonghyun looks like he wants to sit so you create a lounge in Florence over the River Arno. It was the one place you wanted to go together but didn’t get to while you were still Hwang Minhyun, flesh and blood.  


“I do,” you say. A server whirrs and clicks somewhere and the memory is served. You want to tell him that you can even see him out in the hallway when you had that moment and he had to leave to go outside. Two years ago The Server integrated with all publicly available CCTV footage and as part of your upgrade it was fused with your knowledge base.  


The breeze of early autumn in Florence blows through Jonghyun’s hair, exposing his receding hairline. He smiles quietly. He knows you know, and that you know more, much more vastly, than he does. So he keeps quiet.  


Perhaps Jonghyunhas grown more intellectually adventurous in his old age. You store this information for later.  
  


#  
  


It occurred to you that to the person reading your record later you might do a check on Jonghyun’s marital status. Mrs. Kim and Mr. Kim were divorced two years ago. It should be none of your business but Jonghyun is your friend. An old friend, with whom you had shared many flesh and blood experiences.  
  


#

  
  
“What’s with your face today?”  


“How’s my face,” you ask.  


“You look tense.” Jonghyun laughs. “You can be tense? I thought you were all- knowing.”  


You look at yourself in your mind’s mirror. There is a short, vertical line in the middle of your eyebrows. “How should I look if I am all-knowing?”  


“I don’t know,” Jonghyun giggles, and summons a mug of tea. “More God-like, maybe? Oh, cut it out. No robes.”  


“White was my color.”  


“Key word being _was_.”  


“How about this?”  


“No Minhyun. Although you bald does give me hope that I’ll age just as well when all my hair goes.”  


You tuck away your Zen Buddhist skin for another moment. “What moment would you like to see me in?”  


The request brings Jonghyun somber again and you regret having said it. For him, sudden skin changes are just an accelerated version of the costume changes he endured in his younger, stage performance days. But a willing, subservient you sobers him. He doesn’t like to be reminded that you’re not FNB anymore.  


“Well,” he says. “How about if you were actually,” and he gestures at himself.  


“Please explain.”  


“If you were alive now. What would you look like?”  


“Most likely this.”  


“Ah,” Jonghyun sighs, and sinks into the couch, taking you in. His blood pressure is rising.  


A familiar location pixelated and then crystallizes around the couch. It is your cousin’s house in Busan. You had purchased it with your show earnings. It had finally been enough. It is past what used to be Haeundae, towards the rocky eastern coastline. Blinding blue water everywhere. In your mind’s eye you drive up a hill past the pastures and the plow lands that slow download level after level toward the sea.  


The house is a fetching blue-grey with a tin roof to match. Halfway up a hillside. Behind you the sound of the ocean, a roar of white noise.  


It was your house and you made it beautiful for the someday that would be the two of you. Off-white walls and the then-trendy exposed light fixtures and the timber hanging from the ceiling. Cozy, still. Sunlight streams through a wall of windows, but thick rugs huddle before a brick fireplace, and a small kitchen opens onto the living room. A worn and misshapen couch, pale blue, threadbare, and covered with a rainbow of pillows, sits before the fireplace. Jonghyun sits there now. You walk over and sit next to him.  


A wind chime blows somewhere behind the kitchen. In your memory, Hwang Minhyun clears his throat. Jonghyun turns to find him watching him intently, one hand still on the front door. Minhyun looks nervous. Jonghyun swallows. That Minhyun has invited him here—  


Jonghyun walks over to Minhyun and shuts the door firmly behind them. He crowds Minhyun against the doorframe and kisses him. In between kisses, with wet eyes and wet lips and a wavering voice, Minhyun asks Jonghyun if he likes the house.  


Jonghyun says that he does. He really does.  


“Minhyun,” Jonghyun says. “Minhyun, are you—”  


You find your face is wet with quanta. “Yes, I am.”  


“You cry?” Jonghyun’s thumbs are on your cheeks, wiping your tears away.  


“Of course,” you say. “I’m not a robot.”  
  


#  
  


Some time goes by without another visit from Jonghyun. You sit in your black box and deep crawl into the Server. Jonghyun is at the supermarket. He visits the postal office to mail some things. He gets on a plane to Seoul and visits an old friend.  


“Dongho,” you say.  


“What,” Dongho yells back from the shower.  


“How’s Jonghyun,” you say.  


“Whoa whoa whoa.” Dongho steps out of the shower, dripping wet. Wet, no no. But Dongho looks terribly funny like this. You save the footage for posterity.  


“How’s Jonghyun,” you repeat.  


“He’s fine,” Dongho says. “But don’t you already know everything, anyway? Why’re you asking me?”  


“Jonghyun does not have the Server installed.”  


“And you wanna know about his blood pressure or something? Go ask his medical.”  


“Jonghyun does not have the Server installed.”  


“And boy do I pity the fool who does not have the Server installed. But don’t ask about other people, Min.” Dongho narrows his eyes into the air. “It’s not right. They taking care of your brains? They’d better be taking care of your brains for how much you paid them to upload you.”  


“I’m fine,” you say. “Also, I’m self-maintaining now.”  


“You were self-cleaning, too.” Dongho giggles. He’s dried off but for a wet spot on his upper back. Dongho runs the faucet and grabs his toothbrush. “Hey, come over.”  


“Okay,” you say, and project yourself onto Dongho’s bathroom mirror. “Hi.”  


“Hi,” Dongho grins. “You look good.”  


“You’ve gained weight.”  


“Honesty setting—zero,” Dongho quips.  


“I was just kidding.”  


“Fine. Humor setting—zero.”  


“I hate you,” you say very gravely.  
  


#  
  


“Why did you lie to me,” you ask, because you are programmed to must know.  


“About what?” Jonghyun says, looking up from the chessboard. You have been ten moves away from beating him resoundingly but pity and the difficulty handicap strays your hand each time.  


“About your divorce.”  


Jonghyun’s face darkens. “Who told you?”  


“No one.”  


“Dongho? Minki?”  


“No one,” you say.  


“Fine, you hacked my files.”  


“It’s public record, Jonghyun. If I were flesh and blood, I would just have to visit the courthouse to see your papers. Any private investigator from the twentieth century could do the same.”  


“What else do you know about me?” Jonghyun’s tone is scared, angry, and excited. “About my life? You’ve been following me for the last fifteen years without saying anything?”  


It’s not as if you can call. You are an on-demand service. “You haven’t installed the Server in your home, so I can’t follow you,” you explain. “I presume you only come visit me when you run errands due to the proximity of a VR cafe between your apartment and the supermarket that stocks your favorite off-label strawberry Pocky.”  


Jonghyun deflates a little at the mention of the Pocky. “You remember the strawberry Pocky?”  


Of course. You can see everything he’s purchased with his credit card in the last thirty days. Jonghyun isn’t quite as off-grid as he thinks he is. But until he asks for your help you’re not going to tell him where he’s exposed. “Of course,” you half-truth. “I remember.”  


  
#

  
  
It takes a few months but finally Jonghyun installs the Server. Before you launch your hologram you put on your true age skin because according to the EQ assessment algorithm, that is what Kim Jonghyun has indicated he likes best.  


You launch in Jonghyun’s apartment looking at yourself in his mirror. He stands next to you.  


“Hi,” Jonghyun says. “Wow.”  


“Everything but touch,” you say, and your servers click and whirr in disdain for leading with a negative. But Jonghyun just smiles.  


“That’s what the login chip is for, right?” He points to the blue node on his temple. You gasp.  


“That’s the newest.” And you comb your database just to double-check but you’re sure. “Oh Jonghyun. I’m not compatible with that yet.” You almost tell him that you’re in beta right now with 500 pilot users but that would just estrange him. You quickly link Jonghyun’s account with the pilot user program and file a ticket.  


Jonghyun fidgets. “Oh. I thought—they said at the store—”  


“It’s okay,” you move to place your hands on his shoulders but your hands pass right through. You curse again. “It’s okay. Jonghyun,” you say. You’re flustered. “They’ll fix it soon, Jonghyun. Oh—”  


“Soon,” Jonghyun says, looking into your eyes.  


Nothing else makes you feel so real.  
  


  
  
 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this after reading some of my old Matrix fic. 
> 
> I don’t think a reality like this is too far off. SM Entertainment is an investor / partner with an AI shop in Pasadena and Lee Sooman has said he wants to build the next generation of AI celebrity. I imagine that in the future, popular celebrities will be able to create AI versions of themselves to interact with people online. They will be able to license their “form” to star in commercials, etc, for them, and earn royalties. Even after the “original” celebrity dies, the AI celeb can continue on. Their royalties can maintain their servers as long as long as they are popular, so in effect the celebrity could live on forever. 
> 
> This is more or less how it happens now, but in the future our interaction with media stars will be way more interactive and personalized, powered by massive cloud technologies and neural networks. In the future you may not even want to have a family because you could live with very, _very_ advanced celeb personas who will be at your beck and call (hence the double play on the title, “The Server”), probably as subscription-based apps on your Amazon Echo or your Google Home device. It’s a bit of a scary thing to think about. If you have real feelings of love for a celeb and they live all around you (as Siri and Alexa do)... is this really any different from having a real relationship? We all have relationships and feelings about brands, products, and services today. Wouldn’t an AI-powered future just enable us to have even more “human” relationships with brands, products, and services? And on the celeb (“supplier”) side, where does the human end and the brand/product/service begin? 
> 
>  
> 
>  **Time to write:** 2 hours 20 minutes  
>  _If you enjoyed this story, please consider leaving kudos or a comment! It is every writer’s fuel._


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